Flint blows out a slow breath through his nose.
“She told me she was falling for me.” The words come out flat. “Said she wanted to take a chance on me. That she had planned on telling me last night, but then I walked in and told her what I’d done. She said her ex broke her trust and she swore she’d never put herself in that position again, and I…” I shake my head. “I really hurt her. I hurt her badly. I was intimate with her. I connected with her, and then I broke her.”
He’s quiet for a beat.
“My rule is to never sleep with the same female twice,” he says finally. “It’s safer that way. Anything more than once, and she starts to think there’s something between you, and then it gets messy. My other rule is to never mix business with pleasure, for the same reason.”
I give him a look. “That isn’t helping me right now.”
He shrugs. “I know it isn’t, but it’s true.”
“I know I messed up, Flint. I know it. You don’t have to explain it to me.” I chew on my bottom lip for a few seconds. “I can’t stand the thought of her in a cell. It’s killing me. I keep seeing it in my mind’s eye. She’s a doctor, for fuck’s sake. She fixes shifters like us – makes sure they survive. She’s a good person, and now she’s in jail, and I put her there.”
“You didn’t put her there. Don’t do that. Those fuckers who framed her put her there.”
“You know what I mean,” I say again, quietly.
He turns to face me properly. “Here’s what we do. We take Layla in the moment she steps through that gate. We offer her the same deal we offered Rachael Da Silver. Witness protection for her and her family in exchange for everything she knows. It’s ultimately the same people who did this to your doctor. Once we have Layla talking, we work Robyn’s case from the same angle. Like you said the other night, it’s twelve people on the access list at that hospital storage room who are our suspects. I already pulled the files. Eight are male, four are female. That narrows it down considerably. Based on the shoe print we found, we know it’s more than likely one of the males.”
“I agree with Reed on one thing.” I look at him. “We can’t pin everything on that footprint. The loafers might not be related to the framing. Whoever was at the bottom of the emergency stairs that led to Robyn’s apartment might have been doing something else. We need to look at all twelve. All angles. I don’t want to be locked in on one theory and miss something.”
Flint nods slowly. “Agreed. We’ll work all angles. Every name.”
“I want pictures of all twelve, ideally headshots as well. That, and their vehicle makes and models. I’ll go back through the CCTV from around Robyn’s apartment. I want to look at thestreet footage too. I want to see if I can match one of the twelve to any of the people moving through the area in the days before the planting and specifically on the night of the break-in.”
“I agree that the shoe print and this case might not be related, but let’s face it,” Flint says, “a delivery guy or a gardener doesn’t own a pair of expensive Italian loafers.”
“Let’s wait and see where the evidence takes us.”
He nods. “Agreed.”
A faint chime sounds from the speakers over the gate. The screen flips from “On Approach” to “Landed.” The doors at the gate slide open, and a uniformed female from the airline takes up her post beside them.
“Here we go,” I murmur.
We both turn to face the gate.
The first passengers come through. It’s a young couple with two small kids, the smaller one asleep over the father’s shoulder, his mouth open. Then an older man in a sun hat with a duty-free bag in each hand. Next to come through are three businessmen in shirtsleeves, ties loosened, all checking their phones at the same time. Then a teenager with earbuds in. More people walk through.
I scan every face. Flint does, too.
It suddenly gets busy, and then it starts to ease off to a trickle.
There’s a male in a wheelchair being pushed by an airline attendant.
Then nothing.
The female at the gate looks down at her clipboard. She glances up at the empty mouth of the jet bridge and then back at the clipboard.
Flint and I stand there for a long minute.
“Maybe she’ll be the last one off,” he says, but his voice has gone flat.
“Maybe.”
We wait some more, but no one else comes through that door.
My stomach has gone hard and cold. I can feel it in my chest, too, a dropping sensation that won’t level out.
